Discover Indie Fantasy Bookshops

A series featuring great independent e-bookshops, continuing with a look at the Fantasy genre.

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Lots of publishers sell through Amazon, Kobo, iBooks and other large e-bookshops. But readers may not know that many of those same publishers also sell their books through independent retailers or direct from their own websites.

This series promotes a selection of bookshops, centred around a particular genre. In this fourth post, we're going to look at Fantasy.

Always bundled with Sci-Fi...

It always frustrates me when bookshops clump fantasy books in with science fiction and label them all as SFF.

I understand that both genres were originally denegrated and seen as anything but literature. and maybe still are by some... But still stuffing them into a corner and labelling them with a generic category seems a little anachronistic, considering the millions of pounds/dollars production companies are now making from series' like Game of Thrones, or the absolutely fantastic Expanse.

Considering the ability of online bookshops to categorise titles in any way they want, it almost makes me think they don't really want to sell these titles. Some physical bookshops are much worse than I ever remember. My last visit to a Waterstones (I was helping a friend, okay?) turned into a rant-fest when I realised they had categorised titles as 'Non-Fiction', 'Fiction', and 'Crime'... What do I do with that? How do I find fantasy books in 'Fiction'?

It's clear that Waterstones are trying the Ikea approach - hiding everything so you have to look through the lot, and hopefully buy things you weren't really looking for along the way. They might call it serendipity. I call it sneaky and annoying. I'd shop at Amazon if I wanted sneaky ad annoying.

Teasing the two genres apart to present the most suitable bookshops to you has been... a bit of a process. Which may explain why this initially weekly series has now crept into a longer release cycle - how very George R.R. Martin of me.

Data and all that

I wonder if the book industry's use of data forces many retailers to stick both genres under one label.

Nope. there goes that theory. I can see that the Thema data standard (used to transfer book data between publishers, retailers, etc.) lists Fantasy separately from Science Fiction, and includes plenty of sub-categories for both. I can only assume that other data standards do the same.

The Fantasy Bookshops

Luckily, bookshops that stock both fantasy and science fiction understand their readers, and know to separate the genres.

There are plenty to look through, covering all sorts of fantasy interests. We've got Epic Fantasy covered. Lots of Urban Fantasy. Some amazing world-building and a number of very creative magic systems.

You may have seen some of these bookshops in previous lists, but I've kept a few especially for this one. So, let's see what we can find.

To help us get warmed up, let's start with an author's own shop. Chuck Wendig is an author of science-fiction, fantasy, urban fantasy and more un-categorizable fiction.

For this list I'm thinking specifically of his brilliantly anarchic Mookie Pearl urban-fantasy series, which is one of the few fiction books he sells direct. Take a look and spread your fantasy wings into the weird underworld of Chuck Wendig's imagination...

"Like many foolhardy ideas, The Book Smugglers was born of a time of great adversity. Faced with threats concerning the overwhelming volume of books purchased on a daily basis, Ana Grilo and Thea James resorted to "smuggling" books home in huge handbags to avoid scrutiny."

Book Smugglers Publishing is the digital-first, book creation arm of the glorious review, discussion and news site for genre fiction. They publish anthologies as well as novels, and the prices are always very reasonable.

Books are available as both ePub and Mobi formats and the covers are absolutely fantastic.

Founded in 2010 by two partners with experience of the e-book industry, Untreed Reads is home to over 1,500 titles from a range of authors. They stock fiction, non-fiction, children's books and foreign-language titles.

This particular book, Waves in the Wind, caught my eye with it's nicely designed cover. That's all it takes sometimes.

It's clear from the blog that Untreed are constantly trying out different approaches and are doing their best to get their books in front of readers. Take a look and see if there's something for you.

Most books are available in ePub, Mobi and PDF formats, but check each listing first, since the options vary.

Serialised books have been making a comeback for a few years now. Serial Box are taking that model and turning it into their unique selling point.

The founders include former Tor and Penguin Random House staff.

In their own words:

"Serial Box is here to change all of that: artfully blending together the best of series television and the convenience of ebooks and audiobooks to bring readers a new form of story telling. Releasing fiction serials over the course of 10-16 week seasons, Serial Box is about delivering addictive episodes straight to the user’s digital device to be read or listened to anytime, anywhere."

Episodes are available in ePub, MOBI, PDF and Audiobook formats and cost $1.99 each for individual purchases and $1.59 each for a subscription. Each episode in a series is written by a different member of the book's author team - in a similar way to a television series - and has an estimated reading time of 42 minutes.

Apex is a small press that publishes works of science fiction, horror, fantasy and non-fiction. At the moment, they have around 40 e-book titles for sale, available in ePub, MOBI and PDF formats, all included in a single Zip download. They have beautifully crafted cover images and are heavily discounted compared to their paperback counterparts.

As well as their comic shop (see comic section), DriveThruFiction sell from varied publishers, including Solaris, Monte Cook Publishing (of Numenera fame) and Onyx Path Publishing (publishers of the World of Darkness setting). There's plenty of choice here, across genres, publishers and formats. Driven by its link to the RPG industry, the selection is strongest in that area, but is growing all the time.

An independent bookshop, Weightless Books seem to mainly sell science-fiction and fantasy works. They also offer a number of magazines and anthologies, such as Clarkesworld and Lightspeed. Their direct-to-Kindle delivery system is a great feature.

Let's finish how we started, with authors selling direct. The bookshop of fantasy writers Diane Duane and Peter Morwood, Ebooks Direct, does exactly what it says: sells e-books direct to readers.

This pair of authors are doing what they must to get their books out there. All the while providing a decent service to their customers. They have all the formats covered and have even recently switched to a different payment provider in response to what customers were telling them. Full blown e-bookshops could learn a lot from this operation. And a series about wizard cats guarding the portals between realities is definitely worth a look, right?

So there's a broad selection of e-bookshops, all selling DRM-free Fantasy e-books, and helping us fans get our fix.

While not all are independent ventures, you'll notice plenty of small operations getting on with work that they are obviously passionate about, and that counts for a lot.

I hope we'll start seeing more authors choosing to sell direct soon. It's a great way to connect with readers, especially for already established authors whose rights are returning to them, and are wondering what to do with their back catalogue.

Next Time

Notice I didn't say Next Week...

I'd like to take a closer look at Horror. It's not a genre I'm particularly familiar with. But having read some great books recently, like The Fisherman by John Langan and Seeing Double by Karen Runge, I'd love to find out where to get some more. And I'm sure there are already a few choice shops in my DRM-free Bookshop List.

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